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How Not To Prevent Rape

For some reason, feminists have it in their mind to have their own Todd Akin moment. First there was Senator Evie Hudak chastising a rape survivor by telling her that if the woman had a gun when she was attacked it would not have helped because “actually, statistics are not on your side, even if you had a gun.” Then there was Zerlina Maxwell’s “train mean not to rape” comment on Hannity. According to Maxwell, the only way to prevent rape is to “teach men not to rape women”.

I am quite annoyed with Maxwell, and not just because of her nonsensical, misandrous, moronic, asinine, jackass of a comment. No, what annoys me is that I actually had to watch the clip from Hannity’s show in order to know what Maxwell said. I purposefully avoid watching and reading right-wing material because of its stupidity. So one knows the situation is bad when Sean Hannity makes more sense. See for yourself:

Let us break this down: Democratic Strategist Zerlina Maxwell, who might want to rethink that title given how little strategy she showed during the interview, stated “I don’t think that we should be telling women anything. I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there.”

One, most men are not rapists. Most men do not rape. Most men are not violent. Most men abhor rape. Even the Lisak/Miller study feminists love to cite showed that only 6 percent of men committed rape and that a small portion of those men were responsible for a significant number of rapes. So teaching men not to rape serves no point since 94 percent of all men already know not to rape people.

Three (and as much as it pains me to admit it, I must agree with Sean Hannity), there is no evidence that rapists will listen to anyone telling them not to rape. Feminists have pointed to an anti-rape campaign in Edmonton as proof that targeting rapists works, however, during the same period of time the total crime rate in that area dropped 6 percent. It is unlikely that the ad campaign alone resulted in the 10 percent drop in reported rapes, particularly since dozens of similar campaigns have failed to produce similar results.

Violence does not work that way. As Sean Hannity noted, evil exists in the world and simply telling people not to do bad things is not a solution. As Maxwell noted, most rapes are committed by someone the victim knows, so this is hardly a situation in which the rapist has no idea about the potential impact of their actions.

However, it is clear from the interview that Maxwell was really out to make her point without providing a bit of evidence. That is how we get to her comment, “If you train men not to grow up to become rapists, you prevent rape.”

Really? Train men? Like they are animals? Maxwell cites Men Can Stop Rape and Men Stopping Violence as two organizations that “train” men not to rape. For the record, both those organizations make no effort to address sexual violence against men and boys, and completely fail to acknowledge women as potential rapists and abusers. They are also feminist organizations that push the notion that there is something inherently wrong with males that needs fixing.

This is sexism at its finest, and Maxwell was and remains completely incapable of defending herself beyond repeating “teach men not to rape” on her twitter page, and doing her best Todd Akin “I was misquoted and misunderstood” impression on Feministing. I do not agree with the threats people made against her, however, I have no problem with people calling her position stupid or idiotic because her comments make no actual sense.

She essentially accused all men of being rapists and argues, sans any evidence, that telling men not to rape is more effective than arming women. I agree with Maxwell that guns are not the answer, but if I had to pick what would more effectively stop rape, a bullet coming out of a gun seems better than telling the 94 percent of men who do not commit rape not to do something they already do not do.

Even the attempts to defend Maxwell had to dance around the sheer stupidity of her comments. From Salon’sMary Elizabeth Williams:

The mere notion that maybe men need to be involved in the conversation about sexual violence earned Maxwell instant disdain, anger – and a lot worse. The Blaze called her remarks “bizarre” and the Washington Times reported that she’d “argued against women arming themselves.” Deeper down on the Internet, the responses got even more scathing, from bloggers who said she’d been “oversimplifying” to the Twitter trolls who told her she ought to get raped. Thanks for the feedback, Internet dopes. Why would anybody think that you need some sensitivity training?

Williams is no position to argue about sensitivity training given some of her articles about men and male survivors. Setting that aside, Williams’ initial point is wrong. Maxwell did not argue that men need to be involved in the conversation about sexual violence; no, she accused all men of being rapists and boldly claimed that the only way to stop rape was by training men, like dogs, not to rape.

Maxwell’s position so obviously moronic that she trots out another recent favorite feminist retort: “If firearms were the answer, then the military would be the safest place for women, and it’s not.” Oddly enough, many military personnel do not walk around armed all the time. And there is also that pesky fact that the majority of victims of rape in the military are men, not women.

If this is really the best feminists have to offer, it is no wonder their methods are not effective. The grandest irony of all is that this conversation did not promote more discussion about preventing sexual violence. Instead, it only prompted discussion about feminists’ misandry and stupid non-solution to rape and conservatives’ equally inane non-solution.

Blaming all men for the actions of a few does not prevent crime. It only causes animosity and an unwillingness to listen. If you want men to be a part of the conversation, a good place to start is by not treating them as rapists in wait or talk about training them like they are circus animals. Then they might be more inclined to listen to you.

22 thoughts on “How Not To Prevent Rape”

I think you can reduce abuse by educating on where to get help, helping all victims (prevents further abuse done by some), teach kids better ways to handle their anger, etc. I think we can educate about not taking advantage of people who are drunk, etc but it may not stop all rape. It’s worth a try but we also need people to learn self-defense to give them more chance to reduce their risk.

Re the crime reducing….”Sexual violations against children (three per cent increase).
Child pornography (40 per cent increase).” So did the men stopping rape just turn to kids? There’s also the issue that it’s a single year, of one town, along with the reduction in overall crime there is the possibility women didn’t report it as often. If it can be reproduced year after year then it will show a real impact but atm I am not convinced it did a major 10% effort, I do HOPE it has had some reduction though. I’d like to know if the % of men reporting a female rapist changed?

The mere notion that maybe men need to be involved in the conversation about sexual violence earned Maxwell instant disdain, anger – and a lot worse.
It’s not that men being involved in the conversation earned the disdain. Its the level of participation. I’m betting that if men were involved in the conversation in a capacity more than “men are committing sexual violence against women, how do we stop it?” there would not be as much disdain and anger.

(Mind you I’m not saying that this justifies some of the foulness that she was hit up with. But I do think there needs to be room for talk about what Maxwell said other than just retweeting it and saying “THIS!”.)

I’m betting that if men were involved in the conversation in a capacity more than “men are committing sexual violence against women, how do we stop it?” there would not be as much disdain and anger.

I agree, yet it is never started from that position. I also think it is funny how all this support for Maxwell rises from nowhere, yet most of those backing her could not lift their voices to support the 10 young men who testified against Jerry Sandusky.

I’d say another thing that may be the cause of such anger and disdain is how the conversation is presented as a “Conversation on sexual violence” but is usually a “Conversation on male against female sexual violence”. If they really wanted to talk about sexual violence in general then they would not deny, minimize, and excuse types of sexual violence that are not male against female.

With that said there is one thing I’ll give them. I’m all for having an occasional conversation on male against female sexual violence (which I would think would be part of a larger overall conversation that touches on all sexual violence) and there will be times when that is the only type of sexual violence talked about. But as we have seen time and again when male victims are brought up whats the response.

“But they are mostly attacked by men!”

It’s not very constructive to derail like that when talking about victims of sexual violence.

Danny, that is why I think political ideology needs to be taken out of the discussion. None of this happens when you remove the feminist theories and rhetoric. One must simply deal with the reality of the situation, and in that instance things look much more balanced. We then see that we have no real idea how often men and boys are raped. We have no idea how often women rape. We have no idea how often GLBT people are raped. The only group with any acknowledgment is heterosexual women. We also see that rape has less to do with “male domination” and more to do with the individual experiences of the rapists, especially their own history of abuse.

That is the only way we can have real talks about sexual violence. On a slightly related note, I wonder if anyone else has noticed that GMP has stopped running pieces about sexual violence since last year’s fallout.

“I’d say another thing that may be the cause of such anger and disdain is how the conversation is presented as a “Conversation on sexual violence” but is usually a “Conversation on male against female sexual violence”. If they really wanted to talk about sexual violence in general then they would not deny, minimize, and excuse types of sexual violence that are not male against female. ”

On the Salon article, I tried to mention how men also get raped, cited the CDC, and a few people called me a misogynistic hateful troll who has psychological issues, who has to be a man from a right wing red state (after I stated I was a woman).

They also can’t conceive that rape by envelopment is a thing, and that women rapists are committing rape and given a free pass by society, where rape culture boils down to “He’s a man, he wanted it for sure”, “He got lucky” and “He should have fought him/her off”, nothing about how he’s dressed or how he didn’t watch his drink. Nah maleness is incriminating enough evidence to vlctim-blame him.

“The men who ARE rapists are the problem (and since almost all rapists are men, there’s no point in discussing “men and women rapists”—it’s an almost exclusively male crime); if you’re not among the group then you have no beef.”

On the Salon article, I tried to mention how men also get raped, cited the CDC, and a few people called me a misogynistic hateful troll who has psychological issues, who has to be a man from a right wing red state (after I stated I was a woman).

Ironic, yes. Yet the greater irony is that Salon is a left-leaning site. These are supposed to be the progressives. Those leaning forward. If any group should be enlightened enough to acknowledge male victimization, it is should be them. And yet…

TS:We then see that we have no real idea how often men and boys are raped.
We may not know how often men and boys are raped but unless my memory fails me (and it might) I pretty sure I saw Hugo Schwyzer say last years that while we don’t know how often men and boys are raped we do know that it’s not as often as women and girls are…with no evidence.

I was speaking more of Schwyzer’s principles than GMP’s. If my recollection don’t fail me I believe Schwyzer was the one denouncing GMP and the one who withdrew as an editor after the first fall-out between Matlack and some feminists.

Given Schwyzer unpopularity among quite a few feminists I m not sure at all that publishing him will shore up much feminist cred.

“Losing” Schwyzer, Marcotte and Chemaly as contributors were an improvement for GMP in my eyes.

“Losing” Schwyzer, Marcotte and Chemaly as contributors were an improvement for GMP in my eyes.

Perhaps, but remember that GMP’s target audience is feminists, and while Schwyzer has certainly pissed off more than a few feminists, he still has enough clout to help make it look like GMP is getting back to its feminist roots.

Titfortat, it depends on the product. If GMP ran pieces that interested a male audience, it would make more sense to appeal to them. However, GMP run primarily feminist and liberal pieces, so they limit their audience to that crowd and because feminism comes first their audience will be female.